


The Worst Kind of Prison

by ToMakeMeDreamofYou



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Everything, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Author regrets nothing, F/M, Sad, Short One Shot, This is a mood, This will not be expanded, You Decide, trick or treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 15:08:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16477874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToMakeMeDreamofYou/pseuds/ToMakeMeDreamofYou
Summary: The bond cannot be broken. It’s a prison of the worst kind.





	The Worst Kind of Prison

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Is it a Trick or a Treat? You decide.
> 
> Inspired by Rag 'n' Bone Man's Odetta and Bitter End.

“You’ve taken to hiding in the dark too far, Ben.”

She can’t see him glare at her, but she knows he’s glaring at her; his whiskey brown eyes hardening to steel.

“I can see you just fine,” he spits.

Silence broken by a sigh. “But I can’t see you.”

“It’s better this way.”

“Why are you hiding now?”

“You know why.” Shame slinks off him in cold waves, feeding the demons in the dark.

Another sigh. “I need to see you, Ben.”

“No.”

“I can’t stay long.”

“You never do,” he grouses.

“Is this really how you want it all to end?”

Silence screams at her from the impenetrable night between them. She feels the air stir around her, the whisper of his cape moving in the inky darkness, and then his hand—his naked hand—is gripping hers. A heartbeat and his arm is wrapping around her, pulling her into the solid warmth of his chest, buried beneath an armor of black, but warm nonetheless. A drop of water splashes onto her nose from where she imagines his head to be, but she can’t see anything.

“Take me with you,” he begs.

Silence broken by a sigh. “You know that’s not possible anymore, Ben,” she whispers tremulously.

“I’m not letting you go, Rey. I can’t,” he grits out between shaky inhales, pulling his despair ever deeper into his body.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t live here anymore,” she answers grimly, pressing her hand firmly into his chest, above the space where she can feel his heart beating against its cage to follow her. His heart was always hers, even if his broken soul was not.

“That’s not true,” he sobs softly, the force of his emotion swirling through her hair as he expels it from his lungs. He was never good at keeping his darkness inside for long.

“I will always miss you.” She can feel the edges of the bond beginning to fray. It feels like the ends of her nerves are splitting off. It’s itchy.

“Wait!” The desperate edge of his voice echoes in the emptiness, the hysteria swelling up and threatening to burst him open like overripe fruit.

“I will always miss you, Ben.” She’s having trouble making her voice work on this plane. She’s slipping through the fraying edges of the Force.

“Rey! I’m sorry, Rey!” He’s shouting at nothing now.

He blinks, and she is gone.

He screams until his voice is gone too.

The same thing, really.

  
*************************  


“Ben, wake up! Ben!”

He rejoins the world as he was born into it, angry at the surprise and gaping like a fish on land. He whips his head about, eyes darting frantically about the too bright room. A medical facility of some sort, but not a First Order facility.

“Where am I?” His voice sounds like sandpaper.

“Were you having a nightmare?” Rey glances quickly to her left, avoiding his question. It’s best not to upset him too much right now.

Ben shakes his head, wincing at what she can only imagine is the most painful headache of his life.

“No,” he rasps. “A vision.”

“Oh.”

“I can fix it, Rey. I _will_ fix it.”

“Oh, Ben,” she sighs.

“Where are you?” His voice begins to gain the strength of his convictions. She can feel the tides of his heart shift.

“You need to rest,” she says evenly, trying to keep the tremble from her lips.

“I’m not with you, am I?”

She shakes her head slowly, absorbing the myriad levels his question touches upon, and he doesn’t know. He may never know. A single tear escapes her eyes, sliding down a cheek gaunt with regret.

“I want to come home, Rey…to you,” he begs. And he is truly begging, on his knees in his torn and dirty black costume, the cape crumbled around him like a pool of darkness just waiting to swallow him whole. “Please.”

She manages to hold the sob in until Ben fades fully from view, his plea unanswered by her.

“The bond still works,” Leia states with a heavy sigh.

Rey raises a shaky hand to the cool glass before her, her breath shuddering as she tries to peer through the murky depths of the bacta tank.

“We can find a way to break it. In the ancient Jedi—”

“No,” Rey answers sharply.

Silence broken by a sigh. “Rey, you have to move on.”

Rey answers with a terse shake of her head, her eyes focused on the blurry, dark shape floating in the tank.

“He’s lost. He was lost before he was ever born,” Leia says. Rey has never heard her voice so heavy with defeat before; not even when it looked like the Resistance was dead on the salty flats of Crait.

“I’m not breaking the bond, especially now that I'm...” She can't say it out loud, this one truth.

Silence broken by a sigh. “Does he know?”

Rey casts her eyes down from the tank at this question. She doesn’t flinch from the accusation. The memory of clashing lightsabers, one crimson and the other cerulean, threatens to overwhelm her before she locks it away again. “No.”

“Break the bond, Rey. Leave him behind and be free.”

“Free?” Rey fixes her general with an incredulous look, her eyes hardening to a forest of steel. “To be free of him would be the worst kind of prison. I’m not breaking the bond and I’m not leaving him. I will stay here and wait for him to wake up.”

“And then what, Rey?” Leia demands.

“Then it will be time to let the truth be told.”

“Which one?”

“All of them,” Rey murmurs, her gaze drifting down even as she holds her hands firmly at her sides, before raising her eyes to meet Leia’s once more.

“We don’t know when he’ll wake again, or even if he’ll wake again,” Leia counters with a shaky voice.

“I’ll wait as long as it takes. I’m good at waiting.”


End file.
